Wednesday, 8 May 2013

As the dark clouds have returned in the sky so has the gloom of unemployment. Taking a breather from internship hunting I decided to search for some temporary jobs in what is soon to be my local area, Biggleswade. Yes, it is as small town and rural as it sounds; the nearest shop is a miniature Costcutter 20 minutes walk away, and there is a crazy old lady living in the flat below who is said to frequently knock on your door offering to show you her stamp collection (not sure if this is an innuendo or not, but at least I'll have some stories to tell!). However, this was the closest I could get to London without needing to sell my organs to pay the rent. To my utter dismay the only jobs in the area were in ASDA; 8 hours a week to work as a grocery assistant. Great. As my boyfriend currently shares my jobless status he decided to apply whilst I read Grazia and Glamour, which is definitely classed as research when applying to work for magazines! An hour later he slumped into the chair beside me, exasperated at the fact that in order to handle fruit and vegetables he had to complete a personality questionnaire, fill in his entire work history, complete a numerical test, verbal reasoning assessment and he was now waiting to find out if he had been rewarded with an interview. Seriously, is it just me or is this ever so slightly excessive!? It would seem that with the current lack of jobs, employers are making us jump through hoops just to get an interview. One of my family friends joked that in his time, if your boss asked you to do something you didn’t fancy doing you would tell him to 'stuff it'(PG version), quit and walk around the corner to get yourself a new job (thanks for rubbing salt into the wounds). But fear not, a job WILL turn up (she says still unemployed). We will be crowned as the most resilient, recession defeating ASDA employees in the country.